Latest news with #AustralianIndigenous
The Age
08-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Age
Choir tempts fate in fine style for 50th birthday
MUSIC Sydney Chamber Choir 50th Anniversary Gala City Recital Hall, July 5 Reviewed by PETER McCALLUM ★★★★ Celebrating a 50th birthday with a requiem is certainly tempting fate. However, it was worth the risk for the Sydney Chamber Choir to select Paul Stanhope's Requiem (2021), one of the finest of the many commissioned pieces from its first half-century, to be the major work in its anniversary gala. By splicing choral settings of six poems by female writers with settings of the Latin liturgical text, Stanhope has created a rich musical meditation on loss and hope that resonates with monuments of the Western tradition while honouring the expressions of Australian Indigenous culture as expressed in the words of poet Oodgeroo Noonuccal. The Introit grows from humble, chant-like passages to a luminously ecstatic moment in a manner that recalls the shape of Faure's Requiem yet within a totally different musical utterance. The next movement, a setting of Noonuccal's Tree Grave, mixed soprano Brooke Window's bright, pure sound with dragging Mahlerian lines from the small ensemble of harp, percussion and wind instruments. The Kyrie breaks away from this mood with sharply defined rhythm before florid passages welcoming rain by Neela Nath Das. The setting of Noonuccal's Song joined leanly expressive singing from tenor Richard Butler with delicately transparent expressions of pain from harp and woodwind before a brief but quickly suppressed outburst near the close. In contrast to the traditional reverential breadth usually given to the Sanctus, Stanhope conjures holiness with irregular rhythms and angular liveliness reminiscent of Stravinsky. The Agnus Dei, the emotional centre of the work, incorporates a setting of Mary Elizabeth Frye's poem Do not Stand at my Grave and Weep by the soloists, underpinned by solemn intonations of both Latin and English words from the choir. Noonuccal's Dawn Wail for the Dead was preceded by a horn solo in burnished half-light from Euan Harvey. The last two movements return to the chant-like ideas of the opening, and the closing passages mix rekindled hope with lively bird-like snatches from the woodwind for Emily Dickinson's 'Hope' is the Thing with Feathers. Stanhope's use of vernacular poetry to humanise the Latin text recalls Britten's War Requiem but the expressive voice remains distinctively his own.
Sydney Morning Herald
08-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
Choir tempts fate in fine style for 50th birthday
MUSIC Sydney Chamber Choir 50th Anniversary Gala City Recital Hall, July 5 Reviewed by PETER McCALLUM ★★★★ Celebrating a 50th birthday with a requiem is certainly tempting fate. However, it was worth the risk for the Sydney Chamber Choir to select Paul Stanhope's Requiem (2021), one of the finest of the many commissioned pieces from its first half-century, to be the major work in its anniversary gala. By splicing choral settings of six poems by female writers with settings of the Latin liturgical text, Stanhope has created a rich musical meditation on loss and hope that resonates with monuments of the Western tradition while honouring the expressions of Australian Indigenous culture as expressed in the words of poet Oodgeroo Noonuccal. The Introit grows from humble, chant-like passages to a luminously ecstatic moment in a manner that recalls the shape of Faure's Requiem yet within a totally different musical utterance. The next movement, a setting of Noonuccal's Tree Grave, mixed soprano Brooke Window's bright, pure sound with dragging Mahlerian lines from the small ensemble of harp, percussion and wind instruments. The Kyrie breaks away from this mood with sharply defined rhythm before florid passages welcoming rain by Neela Nath Das. The setting of Noonuccal's Song joined leanly expressive singing from tenor Richard Butler with delicately transparent expressions of pain from harp and woodwind before a brief but quickly suppressed outburst near the close. In contrast to the traditional reverential breadth usually given to the Sanctus, Stanhope conjures holiness with irregular rhythms and angular liveliness reminiscent of Stravinsky. The Agnus Dei, the emotional centre of the work, incorporates a setting of Mary Elizabeth Frye's poem Do not Stand at my Grave and Weep by the soloists, underpinned by solemn intonations of both Latin and English words from the choir. Noonuccal's Dawn Wail for the Dead was preceded by a horn solo in burnished half-light from Euan Harvey. The last two movements return to the chant-like ideas of the opening, and the closing passages mix rekindled hope with lively bird-like snatches from the woodwind for Emily Dickinson's 'Hope' is the Thing with Feathers. Stanhope's use of vernacular poetry to humanise the Latin text recalls Britten's War Requiem but the expressive voice remains distinctively his own.
The Age
08-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Age
Britain celebrates Emily, after hidden letter reveals it turned down Indigenous art
One of Australia's most celebrated artists, Emily Kam Kngwarray, will be taken to the world this week in a major exhibition in London – as a long-hidden letter reveals how Britain once dismissed the idea of showing her work. London's tube stations have been adorned with Kngwarray's vivid paintings of ancestral stories to promote the major event at the Tate Modern, the first solo exhibition in Europe to show her work. The exhibition, organised with the National Gallery of Australia, will run for six months and is expected to draw thousands of visitors to see more than 70 works including early batiks and her final paintings. But a letter sitting in a London gallery reveals the Tate turned down an offer to show Australian Indigenous art when Kngwarray was taking the art world by storm. When London gallery owner Rebecca Hossack asked the Tate to consider adding Indigenous works to its collection in August 1996, the institution replied that it was adding contemporary works but would not consider Indigenous artists. 'You may have noticed that we acquired a landscape by Fred Williams last year,' Tate director Nicholas Serota replied, referring to the famous Australian painter. 'I do not think that it would be appropriate for us to move further and to take on an interest in Australian Aboriginal art, any more than we can do the same for equivalent work being undertaken in Africa or Latin America.' Kngwarray, born on Anmatyerr country north of Alice Springs in around 1910, stunned the art world with her batiks and canvases after she began painting in her 70s. Her work now fetches millions of dollars at auction.
Sydney Morning Herald
08-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
Britain celebrates Emily, after hidden letter reveals it turned down Indigenous art
One of Australia's most celebrated artists, Emily Kam Kngwarray, will be taken to the world this week in a major exhibition in London – as a long-hidden letter reveals how Britain once dismissed the idea of showing her work. London's tube stations have been adorned with Kngwarray's vivid paintings of ancestral stories to promote the major event at the Tate Modern, the first solo exhibition in Europe to show her work. The exhibition, organised with the National Gallery of Australia, will run for six months and is expected to draw thousands of visitors to see more than 70 works including early batiks and her final paintings. But a letter sitting in a London gallery reveals the Tate turned down an offer to show Australian Indigenous art when Kngwarray was taking the art world by storm. When London gallery owner Rebecca Hossack asked the Tate to consider adding Indigenous works to its collection in August 1996, the institution replied that it was adding contemporary works but would not consider Indigenous artists. 'You may have noticed that we acquired a landscape by Fred Williams last year,' Tate director Nicholas Serota replied, referring to the famous Australian painter. 'I do not think that it would be appropriate for us to move further and to take on an interest in Australian Aboriginal art, any more than we can do the same for equivalent work being undertaken in Africa or Latin America.' Kngwarray, born on Anmatyerr country north of Alice Springs in around 1910, stunned the art world with her batiks and canvases after she began painting in her 70s. Her work now fetches millions of dollars at auction.
Sydney Morning Herald
06-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
Major wing of New York's famed Met reopens with work by First Nations artists
New York: When an institution as large and prestigious as the Metropolitan Museum of Art embarks upon a major project, it takes time. The remaking of its Michael C. Rockefeller wing, which houses the Met's enviable collection of 650 works from Oceania, began 10 years ago at a planning retreat outside the city. Shuttered since the pandemic, the wing reopened last weekend, including new works by Aboriginal Australian artists at a time when Indigenous art is earning a growing following in the finely tuned and highly competitive New York art world. 'There's a lot of interest and patronage,' says Maia Nuku, the Met's curator for Oceanic art. 'There are particular collectors who have been really invested in making sure these works of art come to major US institutions … It's been ticking away.' Some of those people, including American actor Steve Martin and gallerist D'Lan Davidson, gathered at the Asia Society's head office in Manhattan last week for a conversation about the ethics and resonance of collecting Australian Indigenous art. But there are swings and roundabouts. A major Sotheby's auction of Indigenous Australian art on May 20 was a fizzer, with just 24 of 65 lots sold. It was the first such auction in New York since the prominent Indigenous art champion and consultant Tim Klingender died in a freak boating accident on Sydney Harbour in July 2023. There is a degree of macabre symmetry with Michael Rockefeller, the member of the storied Rockefeller family for whom the Met's wing is named. He was believed to have died when his boat capsized off the coast of then Dutch New Guinea in 1961 – although there has long been a sense of mystery hanging over his disappearance. Unlike Klingender, his body was never found. The Australian section of the Rockefeller wing is modest, but in a prominent location. It features two newly acquired bark cloth paintings by the late Yolŋu artist Nonggirrnga Marawili from her series Baratjala, including a bright work from late in her career when she began experimenting with vibrant pinks extracted from discarded magenta printer cartridges, mixed with natural clay and ochres. 'She didn't want to limit herself to the ochres and the browns,' says Nuku.
